The American Consurfative

So, following on my last post, if statesmanship is more like surfing than like sailing, then standing athwart history yelling “Stop!” is a particularly quixotic mission, pretty much guaranteed to wipe you out. And if that is the case, then what is the purpose of a magazine called “The American Conservative?”

I’m sure everybody around here has a distinct opinion on the question, but it seems to me that where the Tolstoyan attitude toward history leads is to a much greater appreciation for the conservative virtues: being cognizant of limits, valuing continuity with the past, and having a sober-eyed view of reality. And it seems to me that the purpose of this magazine should be to approach politics with a view to cultivating those virtues.

There is no hero in War and Peace. The most heroic figure in the actual conduct of the war is Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. Prince Andrei performs feats of extraordinary heroism in the battle of Austerlitz, feats which have essentially no impact on the final result of the battle, and for which he achieves minimal recognition. By contrast, in the battle of Borodino, Prince Andrei is prevented from doing much of anything, and suffers his fatal wound while standing around waiting for orders to go into action. So much for individual heroism.

There is a villain, of course – Napoleon, personally and politically the negation of everything Tolstoy valued. But Tsar Alexander, Napoleon’s opposite, while portrayed very sympathetically as a noble product of an aristocratic system (whose virtues and vices Tolstoy is well aware of) is not the hero. Though nominally the autocrat, Tsar Alexander as portrayed by Tolstoy is very much the unconscious avatar of forces beyond his control. He is, first, the leader of a pan-European alliance against Napoleon; then, after the defeat at Austerlitz, he makes peace with Napoleon, and becomes an aggressive and liberal domestic reformer; then, after Napoleon’s fatal invasion of Russia, the Tsar becomes the leader of reaction, abroad and at home, to the point where the progressive-minded begin to seriously contemplate the necessity of anti-government action. Though he is only one man, Tsar Alexander manages to embody contradictory forces at different points in his reign based on what the constellation of forces at the time demanded – and he does so entirely without awareness that this is what he is doing. He does not have Napoleon’s illusions about personal genius, but he does think he is in command. And he is not.

If there is a hero in the sense of being the exemplar of the virtues that Tolstoy thought really mattered in leading an army – or a nation – it is Kutuzov, the old man brought out to lead the Russian army in its greatest danger, and cashiered once he achieved success.

And Kutuzov, as Tolstoy portrays him, is distinguished not by tactical brilliance, nor by having some theory of how war should be conducted, but by having an intuitive feel for what conditions actually are, and for not being distracted by his own ego, by any need to prove himself relevant. He abandons Moscow without a fight because Moscow is going to be lost anyway, so why lose the army as well? When the tide turns in Russia’s favor, he senses this, and tries to restrain his own army from wasting lives fighting when the French army is disintegrating of its own accord – but even this restraint he applies prudentially, aware that the spirit of the men will demand opportunities for action even when there is no objective need.

Kutuzov is portrayed less as a commander than as a surfer, sensing the quality of the waves, waiting for the right time to ride them to shore. And more than all the other surfers, he seems to be aware that this is all he is. To that extent alone is he the hero of 1812.

I would argue that, as a society, we could use more of Tolstoy’s Kutuzovs, and more awareness, as a society, of the truth that Tolstoy is articulating about them.

In The Atlantic Monthly for November 1938, the “paleoanarchist” writer Albert Jay Nock devoted one of his signature essays in cameo refinement to “Snoring as a Fine Art: And the Claims of General M.I. Kutusov As an Artist”, which reappeared in 1958 in the posthumous collection Snoring as a Fine Art and Twelve Other Essays, which is now free online.

There is no hero in War and Peace. The most heroic figure in the actual conduct of the war is Prince Andrei Bolkonsky.

Both Russian nationalists and….communists of the post-XX Congress variety had (and have) a consensus–the hero of War And Peace is nation. In fact, War And Peace is considered in Russia by many (very many) to be the first truly Russian nationalist and nation-state novel, enough to recall Prince Andrei’s monologue (with Pierre present) on the eve of Borodino. As for the actual conduct of the war–single personage outshines Andrei in his heroism, since no self-interest is present, no longing for adulation of the public and for glory (and that is who Andrei was prior to Austerlitz)–the guy is Captain Tushin with his cannon battery at the battle of Shoengraben. I cannot emphasize enough the significance of this character for Russian psyche and the buttons Tolstoy pushed describing this character. The reason this novel is called polyphonic is precisely in the fact that Tolstoy was describing the nation across the whole social, intellectual, economic etc. spectrum , it could become about Bakhtin ‘s definition of polyphony but it is not Dostoevsky, it is Tolstoy with his W&P who towers in Russian literature above everyone else.

Von Clausewitz was on the Czar’s general staff and wrote “The Campaign of 1812 in Russia”. It’s short and makes a convincing case that the war was decided at Borodino, the victorious attrition strategy being largely planned, argued for, insistently stuck to, and to a significant extent executed by the Czar’s non-Russian set of generals. Russian nationalism and folk memory chose to selectively remember the experience of Russians.

The distinctively conservative act seems to be to deem works of sufficiently convenient and fairly imaginative fiction, or narratives of fragmentary individual direct experiences, a superior or sufficient means to understand history relative to an ordering and synthesis of a fullness of facts. I.e. deduction and induction as legitimate operations of the mind but timorous and avoiding of the hard, eliminative, emotionally dangerous one, abduction.

“deduction and induction as legitimate operations of the mind but timorous and avoiding of the hard, eliminative, emotionally dangerous one, abduction.”

After sifting through non-germane definitions of abduction (e.g., “the unlawful carrying away of a woman for marriage or intercourse … Synonyms: … rape, snatch [slang]”), I learned one new to me:

“a syllogism whose major premise is certain but whose minor premise is probable.”

The comment was intriguing, if in its abstraction leaving me hungry for a bit of practical application that might illuminate both the weaknesses of that which seems to be implicitly criticized here, and the virtues of undertaking that abduction from which the conservative aesthetic position so faulted would is seen to fight shy.

and to a significant extent executed by the Czar’s non-Russian set of generals. Russian nationalism and folk memory chose to selectively remember the experience of Russians.

That is a strange statement, to say the least, if one considers that if not for the interference from General Volkonsky, a man who in essence created the General Staff (in 1812 the functions of GS were dispensed by the quartermaster officers from Tzar’s Escort–Svita), Russian Army, on the advice of Pfuhl (properly ridiculed by Tolstoy, Clausewitz also got his share of scorn), would have been trapped in Drissa Camp and destroyed. Having said all that, nobody in Russia denies and do not “chose to selectively” remember only the experience of Russians. Names of Bennigsen, Wintzingerode, Saint-Priest and others always were and are well known and are closely associated with the “experience of Russians” in 1812. Enough to recall Soviet (I underscore-Soviet) historian Troitsky who wrote: “Russian corps of generals in 1812 was burdened not so much with domestic talentless courtiers such as Vasilchikov or Shuvalov but with the foreigners, both russified and not, some of whom, like Pfuhl or Ferdinand von Wintzingerode could not speak a single word in Russian”(c). Frankly, this sweeping generalization of what Russian “selectively chose” to remember is ridiculous especially once one begins to review sources on the Napoleonic Invasion from the very inception to the present day. The topic of the foreigners and of their role in that war occupies a very prominent place in the historiography of the event. Totally different matter here if Russians liked that many foreigners?? Many didn’t–that is the fact but it has little to do with selective memory. In conclusion, famous memoir by Fyodor Glinka “The Letters Of The Russian Officer” was a smashing, pardon my french, hit in Russia in 1817 when published first time and since was reissued many times and is considered one of the major works in the field. I have 1990 edition of that book. Well, this bestselling memoir of famous Russian officer and author (and participant of several Campaigns, including War Of 1812) gives very often a high praise to foreign officers in service of Tzar. Enough to mention such assessments as “valorous Count Palen”, the names of foreign officers in Russian service feature prominently and mostly highly praised.

The distinctively conservative act seems to be to deem works of sufficiently convenient and fairly imaginative fiction, or narratives of fragmentary individual direct experiences, a superior or sufficient means to understand history relative to an ordering and synthesis of a fullness of facts.

I suspect you’re on to something there. In my defense, I’m not really making an argument about 1812, but about a fictional character. And knowledge of a fictional character should be adequate for that purpose.

That having been said, I think it’s true that conservatives love stories the way liberals love syllogisms. And one may debate which is a better road to truth; I suspect they are both useful, with complementary functions.